page_title: Lamar Alexander
section_title: U.S. Senate career
hierarchical_section_title: Lamar Alexander / Career / U.S. Senate career
caption_attribution_description: English: With President Trump’s signature, the FUTURE Act is now law–giving Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other Minority Serving Institutions and the 20 million students, including 400,000 Tennessee families, who fill out the FAFSA each year a very good Christmas present.
context_page_description: Andrew Lamar Alexander Jr. is an American politician who is currently serving as the senior United States Senator from Tennessee, a seat he has held since 2003. A member of the Republican Party, he also was the 45th governor of Tennessee from 1979 to 1987 and the 5th United States Secretary of Education from 1991 to 1993, where he helped the implementation of Education 2000.
  Born in Maryville, Tennessee, Alexander graduated from Vanderbilt University and the New York University School of Law. After establishing a legal career in Nashville, Tennessee, Alexander ran for Governor of Tennessee in 1974, but was defeated by Democrat Ray Blanton. Alexander ran for governor again in 1978, and this time defeated his Democratic opponent. He won re-election in 1982 and served as chairman of the National Governors Association from 1985 to 1986.
  Alexander served as the president of the University of Tennessee from 1988 until 1991, when he accepted appointment as Secretary of Education under President George H. W. Bush. Alexander sought the presidential nomination in the 1996 Republican primaries, but withdrew before the Super Tuesday primaries.
context_section_description: Despite vowing not to return to elective office, Alexander was nevertheless persuaded by the White House to run for the open seat of retiring Senator Fred Thompson in 2002. Seen as a moderate Republican by Tennessee standards, his candidacy was vigorously opposed by conservatives, who instead supported US Representative, and a House manager during the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton, Ed Bryant.
  Alexander was better-funded and armed with more prominent endorsements, however, and edged Bryant in the primary, 295,052 votes to 233,678. Democrats had high hopes of retaking the seat that they lost in 1994 with their candidate, US Representative Bob Clement, a member of a prominent political family. However, Clement's campaign never really caught on, and Alexander defeated him in the general election with 54 percent of the vote. With his election to the US Senate, he became the first Tennessean to be popularly elected both governor and senator. At the age of 62, Alexander also became the oldest elected freshman US senator from Tennessee since Democrat Lawrence D. Tyson in 1924.
  In 2006, a newly discovered species of springtail found in Great Smoky Mountains National Park was named Cosberella lamaralexanderi in Alexander's honor, because of his support of scientific research funding in the park and because the springtails' patterning is reminiscent of the plaid shirts Alexander typically wears while campaigning.
caption: Alexander with President Donald Trump in 2019
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